Description

Access values are used to describe the legal access for highway=*s and other facilities including building entrances. The values can be used with the access tag or with tags associated with particular forms of transport. For example access=delivery on a service road tagged with highway=service would imply that all transport modes can use the entrance for delivery only. A building entrance available for pedestrian customers only would be tagged entrance=yes and foot=customers. In addition to transport mode restriction, there may be restrictions relating to height, weight, restrictions may vary by time and day and restrictions may be directional.

Values

Value

Description

yes

The public has an official, legally-enshrined right of access; i.e., it's a right of way

A preferred or designated route for a specific vehicle type or types, often marked by a traffic sign. For compulsory cycleways mapped as separate ways see bicycle=use_sidepath.

dismount

Permitted for some vehicle (or animal) only if you dismount. Mostly used for bicycle: Use bicycle=dismount when people are not permitted to cycle (e.g. through a graveyard) but are allowed to dismount and bring the bike. See Bicycle#Bicycle_Restrictions.

discouraged

A legal right of way exists (see "yes") but usage is officially discouraged (e.g., HGVs on narrow but passable lanes). Only if marked by a traffic sign (subjective otherwise).

Only for customers of the element.[1] Recent addition with disputed applicability (See proposal). Some mappers are using "customer" or "destination" instead.

Access time and other conditional restrictions

Restrictions may be limited to a particular time or day. Or they may limit the access for vehicles over a certain weight. Such conditions can be tagged as shown in these tagging examples:

Ex 1. Only destination access is permitted during 8am and 5pm on Mondays to Fridays:access:conditional=destination @ (Mo-Fr 08:00-17:00)

Ex 2. Motor vehicles heavier than 5 tonnes may only access this street for the purpose of delivering goods:motor_vehicle:conditional=delivery @ (weight>5)

Please note that the above tagging style can be used to replace the following time dependent restrictions. It has been suggested that they be deprecated and should therefore no longer be used.
date_on=*, date_off=*, day_on=*, day_off=*, hour_on=*, hour_off=*. Also note, that using of conditional tag assumes overt indication of value, which mostly suites as a default value. For example, if access is open on one part of day (on this part of day access=permissive) and is closed on other part of day (on this part of day access=private), we have a situation, when we should mark the object with a tag access=permissive or access=private. There is no concrete, precise and universal algorithm to define, if we should use permissive or private in concrete situation, but we can definitely say, that in such case we can't use access=yes (or not use tag access at all), because access=yes (or absence of tag access) means round-the-clock open access for general public.

Size and statutory restrictions

A number of statutary restrictions based on height, width, weight etc can also be defined. A assumed units are the appropriate SI unit and should be specified without any suffix. For lengths use metres, for weights use metric tonnes and for times use hours. Decimal numbers should include a decimal point. Exceptions include speeds which should be in mph in places where speed limits are defined in these units and times which can include a suffix of 'days' if appropriate.

Lane dependent restrictions

Access restrictions may differ between lanes. For details about lane-dependent tags see Lanes.

hgv:lanes=no|yes|yes (Heavy good vehicles are not allowed on the leftmost lane of a road with three lanes)

bus:lanes:forward=no|yes|designated (Buses are not allowed on the leftmost lane of a road with three lanes in forward direction. The rightmost lane is a designated bus lane)

Transport mode restrictions

Use the access=* key to describe a general access restriction that applies to all transport modes. Note, that, for example, adding access=yes to highway=footwaychangesdefault restrictions (which usually are foot=yes and vehicle=no for highway=footway) to yes, highway=footway + access=yes means "road, which is open for all pedestrians and vehicles". Be very careful when adding general permitting tags access=yes and access=permissive, think about adding precise correct tags with concrete transport modes. If you want, for example, distingush footway with open access from footway with closed access, use tags like foot=yes and foot=private instead of access=yes and access=private.

Where different restrictions apply to different modes of transport then mode specific tags can be used. These modal tags each have a place in a hierarchy in which keys become narrower in scope as they branch out from the root.

For example:

access=yes,foot=no means that all transport modes except pedestrians can use the element

access=forestry,foot=permissive implies that forestry vehicles can use the route legally and that pedestrians can use it by currently but that permission may later be withdrawn.

See examples section for more examples.

Land-based transportation

This hierarchy is different in each country. So it's possible that your country has vehicle classes which aren't in this list, doesn't have some which are, and some vehicle classes may even have a different definition from the one listed below:

tanker:singlehull=* (special coverage for single hull as most of Europe and US have more restrictive rules for single hull tankers than for double hull. The general tag is for double hull if this tag is in use.)

Rail-based transportation

Nodes, ways and areas

Tags of "access" group can be used for nodes, ways and areas. There are different priorities in OSM-community, where to put access tag: to area (usually it is a square, which have some specific conditions of access), to line (usually it is roads inside square) or to node (usually it is gate in barrier, which surrounds square, where there is a possibility to enter the area). Note that access tags mark legal status of territory and barriers and warning signs are only physical reflections of restrictions in area. In such manner, area with private status should have appropriate values, even there is no surrounding barrier or it is broken. Note, that different entrances can have different access values and different roads inside area can have different access values too. For example, we have are with permissive access - so we mark it with access=permissive. But there are several entrances, one of which is designated for all people, and other - only for persons, which have key. So we mark one entrance with access=permissive and other - with access=private. Another example - we have botanical garden with permissive access, which have roads, which are designated for public, and roads, which are designated only for stuff of garden. In such case we have access=permissive at one roads and access=private (or access=no) at another.

When you are tagging some area, it is your desicion, where to put "access" tags: to area, to entrances or to roads inside area (because nobody can bring you to add some tags somewhere), but removal of correct tags, which were put but someone else, is a mistake (and is close to vandalism). If you like to put tags to areas, do it, if you like to put tags to roads inside areas, do it, if you like to put tags to entrances, do it. But don't delete tags from type of elements, which you don't like.

Examples

bicycle=yes The public has a right of way when traveling on a bicycle.

References

↑If the general public can become a customer only with preliminary concordance of an owner of an object/territory, or if access is not open for all customers (or is otherwise limited), consider using private instead.